Her 14-year-old son boasts that he has done some 500 break-ins in the past year. Today he was back in court and released once more because the authorities say there is nowhere with room to detain him. His mother, affectionate and frank, is in despair.

THIS WOMAN’S 14-year-old has been responsible for 200 high street burglaries in the past year. He boasts to his mother that he has actually done about 500 break-ins with his gang. The thefts have cost traders in one street £200,000. But social workers have told the boy’s mother that over the two years the gang has operated, they have stolen £2 million worth of goods. He has walked free from court appearances on 33 occasions.

His mother Tracey (not her real name), 32, is sitting in her £100,000 Sutton house. She is a surprisingly kindly woman, pretty, with a gentle face and wearing a gold cross. Her sitting room is neat and feminine. This is her cry for help.

‘I’m frightened this is going to end with my son going into banks with shotguns,’ she says. ‘I’ve told him ‘In a panic you could stab someone, couldn’t you?’

‘Kevin (not his real name) told me yesterday: ‘I don’t regret being a thief. These have been the best two years of my life. I’ll steal while I can because I enjoy it. I’m addicted to it. It feels fantastic going into a shop, taking what you want and knowing nothing can be done to you.” Because of his age, Kevin cannot be remanded in custody and is out on conditional bail. He hasn’t been placed in secure accommodation because every establishment in the country is full. At the moment he is said to be ‘still fifth from the top of the list’.

‘He’s not like a 14-year-old. I’m petrified of him driving drunk to London and going with a woman on the streets and getting Aids. I asked if he went to brothels. He said no. I just said: ‘If you’re going to do something, use something.’ I don’t think boys of that age should go to bed with anyone. He lost his virginity two years ago. He has girlfriends of 18 and older. He also comes in absolutely legless, having driven a stolen car.’ KEVIN burgles Marks and Spencer to Boots. This week he admitted to one major raid on Dorothy Perkins where he stole £28,000 of clothing. His latest string of burglaries totalled £57,000. He sometimes leaves a calling card bearing his initials and the legend ‘Call 999′. He also has his gang insignia tattooed on his wrist. (When he goes to court, Tracey tells him: ‘Don’t bite your nails, keep your hands out of your pockets and be polite.’) Kevin won’t tell his mother where he hides the goods or to whom he sells them. ‘He’s come in with wads of money. I won’t take any – that would condone his behaviour…He says he’s spent it all at top restaurants like the Savoy and Ritz. That can’t eat up £10,000. I said they wouldn’t let him in. But he said he dressed very smartly and stole a good car for the evening.’

Tracey and her boyfriend John are unemployed (and he lives elsewhere). She lives on income support of £91 a week, has a £67,000 mortgage and was recently threatened with repossession. She is £8,000 in arrears and her gas and electricity were recently disconnected. (‘I never had anything as a child,’ she says later. ‘So my dream was always to be able to give my children everything.’ Kevin has never stolen from her. ‘He never steals from houses. It’s his code of honour.’) Events have taken their toll on her. ‘I’ve got so much pent-up anger. I smash anything that’s glass. I’ll throw a vase against the wall or rip my clothes to pieces. I tear up anything that I love. I know I need to see a psychiatrist. And obviously me being like this rubs off on Kevin.’ She finds it hard to cope. For seven years she’s taken tranquillisers and anti-depressants which she gets from a friend. ‘I feel so rough, so down, really awful,’ she says, calmly. ‘I also binge constantly. I cry most of the time. The night before last, I just buried my head in Kevin’s lap, crying and sobbing. He got so upset and said: ‘Don’t cry Mum.”

She leaves her phone off the hook at night. ‘We’ve had threats. One midnight caller said I was a no-good, police-loving, grassing **** and that he was going to slice up my daughter.’

Tracey came from a violent home. Her father, a hotel chef, was a drinker. ‘I was knocked around constantly and beaten badly for years by my dad. He dragged me through the flat by my hair.’ Tracey rarely hit Kevin. ‘Sometimes I felt like strangling him. I just couldn’t get through to him. Now this has blown up, he talks to me.’ She attempted to discipline him by making him stay in, but he would run out.

She doesn’t know whether society needs to condemn a little more and understand a little less. ‘I just want Kevin to be put into care and taken off the streets so that he’s safe. He’ll hate me for saying that.’ Kevin’s background was unstable. Tracey’s first marriage broke up because she ‘married too young’ at 16. ‘I had a nervous breakdown when we split. I couldn’t get up, wash or touch the house. I sent the children to their grandparents. I lost three stone.’ She married ‘foolishly’ the second time, three years ago, and it lasted only a year. She has been with John intermittently for seven years, but they have never lived together. ‘I THINK Kevin missed his dad who left when he was nine. I definitely shouldn’t have parted with him. Kevin adored him. He wasn’t a bad father. He didn’t hit the children.’ (Kevin’s siblings by the same father all behave impeccably. One sister is doing A-levels and wanted to be a policewoman but now hopes to do law.) ‘We don’t really speak. He sees Kevin about once every three months. I’ve rung him to ask him to help me with Kevin and he just says: ‘What can I do?”

She feels very guilty. ‘I wonder what I did wrong with Kevin. I feel completely responsible.’ She hates the possibility that he might be abusing drugs. So how much should he take responsibility for his own behaviour? Big pause. ‘I don’t know. I always blame myself.’

Kevin was trouble from the start. ‘He was a very destructive three-year-old and has always been a rogue. He was sent to school for behaviour problems when he was 11, because he was violent. If anyone upset him, he would go for them. And he would hurt himself. Aged 12, he didn’t want to hit his head teacher, so he punched a fire door and broke his wrist. He used to call the fire brigade to school.’ Though literate, he hasn’t been to school for 17 months.

The first time Kevin committed an offence, two years ago, he defaced a shop in Sutton. ‘A few weeks later he was up for assault. He beat a boy up. He said the boy started it.’ Shortly after, Kevin’s bike was stolen. ‘We’d been saving for it for months. He went frantic.’

So in 1991, they ‘escaped’ to live in France with John. ‘I was also going through a really bad time, finishing my second marriage.’ Kevin was sent to private school there, but lasted only three weeks. ‘He doesn’t like to be the centre of attention,’ she says, without irony.

THEY returned to England to visit the grandparents – and Kevin refused to leave again. ‘After two weeks they called and said they couldn’t cope. He’d started breaking into shops. He made his poor grandad ill, made his heart worse.’ (Kevin is currently living with his grandparents.) Tracey was forced to return permanently. ‘I had to sit in a house with no furniture in it, trying to keep my eye on Kevin. But he was constantly running away. Sometimes for weeks at a time.’

She has no answer to the problem of soaring juvenile crime. Kevin was in care for six weeks, six months ago. ‘He did whatever he wanted, came and went as he pleased.’ She’s upset that the courts haven’t detained him, fearful that he will re-offend. And she’s worried at the prospect of his going into a secure unit. ‘I’m frightened he’ll learn worse things. One boy there breaks a bottle over his victim’s head then smashes it in his face.’ They went to counselling together – once. ‘He just wouldn’t talk outside the family. I didn’t like it either. It made me feel ‘They think I don’t know how to cope with my family.” She disapproves of Kenneth Clarke’s plans to lock away for up to two years 12- to 15-year-olds already convicted of imprisonable offences. ‘It’s too young. These children need help. They need something to do.’

Tracey is frank, cooperative and tries to be as honest as she can when she talks about Kevin, but she is self-deluded. ‘Kevin is so lovable,’ she says, seriously. ‘In court we were cuddling, kissing and holding hands. He’s terribly affectionate. He’s a lovely kid. Very quiet and loving. I love him to death.’

But she doesn’t know if he has a future. ‘He may end up killing himself. I have nightmares about him. I don’t think he’s ever going to grow up. In my dreams, I see him in a coffin, looking the way he is today, but dead.’